"Sacrificial magic requires blood on the altar." ~ Chuck Wendig

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A Year Now, A Blink Tomorrow

And the year ends.

It’s raining here and the world is full of potential. The kids are packing up all of their stuff, and there are boxes floating like buoys across the wooden square-footage of the house. They’re scampering around, packing, rushing, sweating. They know where they’re supposed to go, but have no idea how any of it is going to turn out. Our room too is a tapestry of transition.

Clothes, colognes, perfumes, packing tape, and everything else that can fill up all those lines on a blank page of college rule paper. You remember those.

It was swift and, for some, just. They lived it just as they wanted (Can a parent truly ask for any more?) – filling their free time with friends, homework, café meals and their own custom-designed slices of chosen boredom. They slept, and as Coleridge said, in their sleep, they dreamed, picturing themselves rewritten scenarios of the lives they already live.

And the language. Oh yes, the languages they spoke were many and active. They were a dazzling display of disparate tongues – their medium was their campus. Day in, Day out, and all day long, they connected, knowing of others, speaking to their own, allowing themselves to be overrun with the linguistic arts of those around them.

They climbed, the fell, they hid, they declared, the stood, sat, lay down, and to the degrees acceptable to them, rolled over – all to hear or see their names associated with one of several meaningless letters of the Latin alphabet. They care but they don’t. They’ll do the work, but they won’t. They played the game (some well, and vice versa. But they played it all the same).

Then came the end, speed like a bullet. They needed boxes and tape, organization, and space. No sleep, no coffee, no phone, no games. Pack and pack and pack. Now rest.

Say your good-byes, and don’t hold back. No one knows if they’ll ever be back. Soak it up. Enjoy every drop. In an hour or two, you’ll be out of your room, out of your house, out of your school. And there will be no more time to enjoy the “Now” when it has past.

Off you go, on a plane. Safe travels be with you; and I will see you next year. Maybe that day, like this one, it will be raining, but doubtless, full of potential.